Just Like Alice
by Amberwind2001
Summary: It was not a looking glass, or a rabbit hole, but the blue box had been no less fanciful than those things which transported Alice Liddell to Wonderland.


Short little one-shot, written for The 100 Themes Challenge, prompt #31 - Flowers. The person who can name the old school Who reference towards the end gets a cookie.

~.o0o.~

**Just Like Alice**

_"If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?" – Alice, from Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland"_

It was not a looking glass, or a rabbit hole, but the blue box had been no less fanciful than those things which transported Alice Liddell to Wonderland. And the Doctor was no White Rabbit. Although if she had ever asked Rose was sure he would have been able to rabbit on about somehow inspiring the story, and offer to take her to a world with playing card soldiers. The Queen of Hearts screaming for the removal of their heads would have been fairly routine for them, actually.

The Doctor and his TARDIS had the same magical pull that had tempted Alice to wander; six impossible things before breakfast, indeed. For her own part, Rose had certainly allowed her curiosity to lead her feet, and down the metaphorical rabbit hole she fell.

This wasn't Wonderland, though. No, at first blush there was nothing wondrous about this world at all, except perhaps the zeppelins. At the least, they made the view startling and exotic, for all the familiarity of the landmarks. But the rest of it was grey, barbed wire fencing and class division. Even the balls and banquets she was now privy to, lavish in their detail, were dull, like the entirety of this universe had been coated in a thin layer of ash.

She had a penthouse apartment in central London, with a view of the Thames, bought at her mother's insistence with Pete's money after the baby came. Her balcony porch was choked with plants, flowering vines and delicate annuals in pots somehow clinging tenaciously to life in spite of the thick London air, Rose's negligence, and existence in a world where surely even flowers should be dingy and colorless.

Most of the plants were common enough, ivy and snailvine, petunias and lilies. There were a few exotics, but nothing terribly fancy or difficult to care for. Just a typical English garden, put into pots and transplanted fifty stories high. In a world of ghosts and Cybermen, where she worked for an organization whose name twisted a knife in her, the balcony garden was Rose's bid for normalcy, such as it was.

It never had the calming properties of the garden in the TARDIS (man-eating ambulatory plant not-withstanding), but Rose's garden was soothing in its own humble way. The flowers never judged her for searching the sky and trying to pick out which stars she had visited, or for crying when she finally accepted that the answer was _none_. They simply were.

She remembered things, there among the blooms. Wine glass in hand as she looked out over a London she hadn't been born in, evening illumination dull when she knew that it should sparkle, she had visions of golden light, and singing; _Bad Wolf_. As time went on, and the ache lessened, she began to hum the old strains of her universe's song, when she felt lonely. It was good a reminder as any.

Nights came and went, and time blended into time until she had to double check a calendar to know how long she had been _here_ rather than _there_. During her fourth summer, the plants had overrun their pots, and Rose's balcony resembled a jungle more than anything after that, the foliage un-pruned and allowed to grow as it would. She hardly knew which plants were which in the chaos, but they were friendly and inviting just the same.

An evening came, months later (or perhaps it was years, she couldn't be quite sure), when the humming just wouldn't do anymore. It wasn't strong enough, or loud enough, and the universe that was her home had never felt so far away. _He_ had never felt so far away. And so, with a half glass of chardonnay forgotten on the floor beside her, Rose sang. She sang to the leaves and petals, the flowers not judging her when her voice cracked and broke over notes not meant for a human tongue. After several long moments, her voice died away, unable to sustain the melody that ran in her head.

But, faintly, from a corner of the balcony, the song continued. She searched through the overgrown plants; perhaps someone's pet Myna bird had escaped, and chose to mimic her?

At long last, she found the source. At first she was confused, and then slowly delighted. She had never seen these flowers before, hidden away in the forgotten corners of her balcony garden, with six yellow petals arranged like a star, and metallic silver leaves. And they _sang her universe's song_, more truly and brilliantly than she could ever manage, waving slightly in a nonexistent breeze. She sat beside the pot, picking away the remains of the plant that had died and been grown over by these strange, alien blooms, enthralled by their singing.

Perhaps she had found a tiny piece of Wonderland, after all.


End file.
